Meditation Makes Lasting Change in Brain

Meditation Makes Lasting Change in Brain

A new study has found that participating in an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating. Researchers also found differences in those effects based on the specific type of meditation practiced.

“The two different types of meditation training our study participants completed yielded some differences in the response of the amygdala – a part of the brain known for decades to be important for emotion – to images with emotional content,” says Gaëlle Desbordes, corresponding author of the report, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. “This is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state.”